TY - JOUR AU - Turcotte, Bruno AU - Bélanger, Lynda AU - Blais, Anne-Sophie AU - Blouin, Annie-Claude AU - Bolduc, Stéphane AU - Bolduc-Mokhtar, Amélie AU - Bureau, Michel AU - Caumartin, Yves AU - Cloutier, Jonathan AU - Deschênes-Rompré, Marie-Pier AU - Dujardin, Thierry AU - Fradet, Yves AU - Gaudreau, Noémie AU - Lacombe, Louis AU - Moore, Katherine AU - Morin, Fannie AU - Nadeau, Geneviève AU - Paquet, Sophie AU - Simard, Francis AU - Simonyan, David AU - Soucy, Frédéric AU - Tiguert, Rabi AU - Toren, Paul AU - Lodde, Michele AU - Pouliot, Frédéric PY - 2022/05/20 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Perception and satisfaction of patients after telemedicine urology consultations: A matched analysis with physicians’ perspective JF - Canadian Urological Association Journal JA - CUAJ VL - 16 IS - 10 SE - Original Research DO - 10.5489/cuaj.7819 UR - https://cuaj.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/7819 SP - 334-9 AB - <p><strong>Introduction:</strong> During the first regional COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, we conducted a study aimed at evaluating completeness of telemedicine consultation in urology. Of 1679 consultations, 67% were considered completely managed by phone. The aim of the present study was to assess patients’ experience and satisfaction with telemedicine and to compare them with urologists’ perceptions about quality and completeness of the telemedicine consultation.</p><p><strong>Methods:</strong> We contacted a randomly selected sample of patients (n=356) from our previous study to enquire about their experience. We used a home patient experience questionnaire, inspired by the Patient Experiences Questionnaire for Out-of-Hours Care (PEQOHC) and the Consumer Assessment Health Profile Survey (CAHPS).</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> Of 356 patients contacted, 315 agreed to complete the questionnaire. Urological consultations were for non-oncological (104), oncological (121), cancer suspicion (41), and pediatric (49) indications. Mean patient satisfaction score after telemedicine consultation was 8.8/10 (median 9/10) and 86.3% of patients rated the quality of the consultation as either excellent (54.6%) or very good (31.7%). Consultations regarding cancer suspicion had the lowest score (8.3/10). Overall, 46.7% of all patients would have preferred an in-person visit outside of the pandemic situation. Among patients whose consultations were rated suboptimal by urologists, almost a third more (31.2%) would have preferred an in-person visit (p=0.03).</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Despite high reported patient satisfaction rates with telemedicine, it is noteworthy that nearly half of the patients would have preferred an in-person visit. Post-pandemic, it will be important to incorporate telemedicine as an alternative, while retaining and offering in-person visits.</p> ER -